15 years for taxi man who ran down 8

It was a deliberate manoeuvre at speed, knocking over pins in an alley

Claire Wilks

Majid Rehman ran over them on a pavement after a row at a railway station taxi rank.

Shocked commuters watched as his cab ploughed into six railway workers in high-viz jackets and two passers-by.

Judge Phillip Richards told him: “You sent bodies flying in all directions, one being trapped under your car. Your intent was to cause them all serious harm.”

Rehmen, 29, was waiting on the taxi rank outside Cardiff Central station when a row flared with the railway workers.

Claire Wilks, prosecuting, said: “Eventually the group left the area. But it seems Rehman wouldn’t let it be.

“He left the taxi rank and drove after the group of six railway workers, according to one witness even going through a red light.”

Two other victims, Mark Underwood and Richard Partridge, were walking in front of the group and had nothing to do with the railmen.

Miss Wilks said: “As they walked away from the railway station, Rehman drove his taxi, and in a rage, mounted the pavement and collided with the group of eight men. It was a deliberate manoeuvre at speed, knocking over pins in an alley.

“Mark Underwood was trapped under the taxi and suffered significant burns to his back, legs and arms as he was wedged under the hot engine.

“It was a chaotic scene, emotions were running high, and Rehman was pulled out of his taxi and assaulted.”

Cardiff Crown Court heard Rehman had given evidence against one of the railway workers in a robbery court case in 2009.

Rehman, of Grange-town, Cardiff, said the railway workers had spotted him sitting in his taxi on March 27 and punched him in the chest.

He told the jury: “I got into my cab to drive home. I don’t remember driving on to the pavement and I don’t know why I did it.”